Profiteers, too, fight government in Somalia

[Gordon Gekko]

The International Herald Tribune has made an unerring description of the "xoogaga xaqdoonka ah" and the reasons behind their tenacious existence. Lately there has been an abundance of articles focused on civilian deaths and mass exodus (with all due respect, these topics should be adressed as well) but very few if any articles like this; giving a reminder of what may be in store for Somalia in the event of the demise of the TFG: good ol' anarchy with renewed looting and clan fighting such as the one after Siyad Barre.

 

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GALKAYO, Somalia: Beyond clan rivalry and Islamic fervor, the chaos in Somalia is being helped along by an entirely different motive: profit.

 

A whole class of opportunists from squatter landlords to teenage gunmen for hire to vendors of out-of-date baby formula has been feeding off the anarchy in Somalia for so long that they refuse to let it go. They do not pay taxes; their businesses are totally unregulated, and they have skills that are not necessarily geared toward a peaceful society.

 

In the past few weeks, these profiteers have been teaming up with clan fighters and radical Islamists to bring down Somalia's transitional government, the country's 14th attempt at ending the free-for-all of the last 16 years. They are attacking government troops, smuggling in arms and using their business savvy to raise money for the insurgency. And they are surprisingly open about it.

 

Omar Hussein Ahmed, an olive oil exporter in Mogadishu, the capital, said he and a group of fellow traders recently bought some missiles to shoot at government soldiers. Taxes are annoying, he explained.

 

Maxamuud Nuur Muradeeste, a squatter landlord who makes a few hundred dollars each year renting out rooms in the former Ministry of Minerals and Water, said he recently invited insurgents to stash weapons on his property. He will do whatever it takes, he said, to thwart the government's plan to reclaim thousands of pieces of public property.

 

"If this government survives, how will I?" Muradeeste said.

 

Layer this problem on top of Somalia's sticky clan issues, its poverty and its nomadic culture, and it is no wonder that the transitional government seems to be overwhelmed by the same raw anti-government defiance that has torpedoed all the earlier attempts.

 

Granted, many of the transitional leaders themselves acknowledge that they have made mistakes and not played the clan politics as deftly as they could have. But they say they believe that there are simply some Somalis actually many who will never go along with any program.

 

"Even if we turned Mogadishu into Houston, there would still be people resisting us," said Abdirizak Adam Hassan, chief of staff for Somalia's transitional president, Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed. "I'm talking about the guys bringing in expired medicine, selling arms, harboring terrorists."

 

"They don't have a clan name," he said. "They're a congregation of people whose best interests are served by no government."

 

In the last month, the resistance has increased, and more than 1,000 people have been killed or wounded as the country has sunk into its deepest crisis yet since the famine days of the early 1990s.

 

Most of the victims are civilians, like Amina Abdullahi, who recently fled Mogadishu with two small children holding her hands and a baby tied to her back.

 

"I don't understand why this is such a problem," Abdullahi said. "If people don't like this government, can't they wait until there is an election and vote them out?"

 

U.S. diplomats have mostly shied away from Somalia since the infamous "Black Hawk Down" episode in 1993, when Somali militiamen shot down two U.S. helicopters and killed 18 U.S. soldiers.

 

Now the Americans are involved again, driven by a counterterrorism agenda and armed with a pledge of $100 million to stabilize the country. But it is exactly this kind of hefty support that is fueling the resistance's urgency, because the opportunists sense this transitional government, more than any other, poses the biggest threat yet to the gravy days of anarchy.

 

Somalis are legendary individualists, and when the central government imploded in 1991, people quickly devised ways to fend for themselves. Businessmen opened their own hospitals, schools, and telephone companies, and even privatized mail service.

 

Men who were able to muster private armies (often former military officers) seized the biggest prizes: abandoned government property, like ports and airfields, which could generate up to $40,000 a day. They became the warlords. Many trafficked in guns and drugs and taxed their fellow Somalis at roadside checkpoints.

 

Beneath the warlords were clan-based networks of thousands of people adolescent enforcers, stevedores, clerks, truck drivers and their families all tied into the chaos economy. Ditto for the freelance landlords and duty-free importers.

 

Over the years, prominent members of the ****** clan, Mogadishu's biggest, have tried to cobble together a government and end this system. But they have failed each time. Somalia is notoriously fragmented between dozens of rival clans and subclans. It has been that way for centuries.

 

But clans alone did not seem to be the problem. "It was the opportunists who didn't see a role for themselves in the future," said Mohammed Abdi Balle, an elder in Galkayo, a city about 700 kilometers, or 450 miles, north of Mogadishu.

 

Not all opportunists had the same agenda. Many in the business community eventually got fed up with paying protection fees to the warlords and their countless middlemen, who became increasingly disorganized and rapacious.

 

Business leaders then backed a grassroots Islamist movement that drove the warlords out of Mogadishu last summer and brought peace to the city for the first time in 15 years.

 

The Islamists seemed to be the perfect solution for the traders: They delivered stability, which was good for most business, but they did not confiscate property or levy heavy taxes. They called themselves an administration, not a government.

 

"Our best days were under them," said Abdi Ali Jama, who owns an electrical supply shop in Mogadishu.

 

But then a radical wing took over, and the Islamists declared war on Ethiopia, which commands one of the mightiest armies in Africa. The Ethiopians, with covert U.S. help, crushed the Islamist army in December and installed Somalia's transitional government, which until then had been very weak, in the capital.

 

Many residents initially welcomed the transitional government. But then it made some questionable calls that cut across clan and business lines. It abruptly closed down ports and took over airfields belonging to ****** businessmen, denying them revenue they had been accustomed to for years.

 

Many Somalis began to worry that the transitional government, which includes elders from all of Somalia's clans, was being pushed around by the *****, the clan of the transitional president and a historical rival to the ******.

 

At first, just a few ****** subclans, mainly those connected to the Islamists, took up arms. But as the government has moved to curtail the profiteering, business leaders say that more and more clans are embracing the rebel cause.

 

For many Abgal, an influential sub-clan of the ******, the last straw came in mid-March when the government increased port taxes by 300 percent.

 

Ahmed, the olive oil exporter and an Abgal, said that after that, there was a mass Abgal defection to the insurgency. "The government is trying to destroy business as we know it," he said.

 

Despite various attempts at a cease fire between insurgents and government forces, the violence has raged virtually unabated in Mogadishu and residents have continued to flee in the tens of thousands.

 

Again, the opportunists have stepped in. In some areas, displaced people are forced to pay a "shade tax" to local residents for resting under their trees.

[me]

lol@taxes are annoying...that guy is right, he has my vote.

 

But this article is rubbish, its pure propoganda.

[XOG-ogaal]

article is rubbish, its pure propoganda.

 

100% its pure propoganda.

[Faarax-Brawn]

"Even if we turned Mogadishu into Houston, there would still be people resisting us," said Abdirizak Adam Hassan, chief of staff for Somalia's transitional president, Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed. "I'm talking about the guys bringing in expired medicine, selling arms, harboring terrorists

Can Someone remind Abdirizak that he is late 7 months & hodhodho?

[DigibAc]

TheSomaliEconomist,

 

If this government wants to provide services to the citizens, then the first thing they need to do is stop killing the civilians and to tell foriegn forces to leave the country.

 

But they are not going to do that, because they don't want to be government for Somali. They just want power. This is not a war where a government is fighting agaist rebels, this is a war where certain clans are trying to use the guise of government and the firepower of gaalo to get what they think is revenge for the events of the ‘90’s.

 

The "looted properties" card is played out. It's not gonna win you any friends.

[ElPunto]

^Played out? Whaa? For some individuals this battle is about loot. In fact - the 16 year plus battles in Mogadishu have been primarily about that. And this reporter documented that aspect of the current conflict in Mogadishu.

 

And this war can be spun clan-wise anyway which way you desire because that card can played from all sides.

[Castro]

The Ethiopians, with covert U.S. help, crushed the Islamist army in December and installed Somalia's transitional government, which until then had been very weak, in the capital.

Anyone who calls the recent US involvement in Somalia "covert" should be mistrusted. How much more overt can it get than with AC130's? LOL.

 

War is profit and this one is no different. The loot many mention around here is mostly barren lands and demolished homes worth a pittance. (Homes and land whose pre-Afweyne owners may claim were ill-gotten to begin with.) Where is the real loot that all these men, women and children are being bombed for? In Iraq, it's clearly the oil. What is it in our case? Foreign aid? Regional hegemony? Access to sea ports? Resource mining?

 

If every time loot is mentioned the thought of your aunt's villa in Hodan or your uncle's pharmacy in KM4 is all you can see, then y'all don't even know what loot is. :rolleyes:

 

And the poster calls him self an "economist". Economics-ey xaal qaado.

[Xoogsade]

^ You can add to the facts saxib that entire sections of Muqdisho was flattened in the early 1990s, thick forest had grown in entire sections of Old Xamar and no one lives there.

 

Also, if it is about property that people in Muqdisho want to keep, they wouldn't have supported the ICU which had an islamic platform, and which would require everyone to give up any loot. It is notewrothy that many properties were returned to those who went back in the ICU days. My own mother was on the waiting list to recover her land, a land onwhich someone built a small home. Illegally built homes on other people's property were destroyed in Kaaraan district. The sheekh was on BBC talking just about that during those old days of the ICU.

 

These individuals on SOL with the "LOOT" monotonous comment know where the looters are: In bed with their clan president and he loves them, among them Qeybdiid, Yalaxoow, Qanyare and the rest of Muqdisho crooks.

[DigibAc]

^^right on the mark Xoogsade!

 

my mother too got go some of her properties back during that period. many of the real criminals of the civil war are in the tfg

[Jacaylbaro]

The article is touching a wound ,,,,, it is some how TRUE

 

 

We always speak about ousting and removing a government ,,,, but never talk about who is ready to replace

[Jacaylbaro]

Can you post the link to this article plz ???

[Gordon Gekko]

^^ Certainly sir: http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/24/business/somalia.php

[Peacenow]

It's not from the IHT its from the NYT! Agreed, this article is pure diversion. It serves no purpose. The guy who wrote it, is not even a proper NYT reporter. He is not constrained to check his facts and sources high enough. Rotten tricks.

 

Would nominate this post to be deleted. It serves no purpose, other to misinform.

[Gordon Gekko]

^^ Does this article hurt so much? Does it dirt down the all rosy picture of the "xoogaga xaq u dirirka" that is being promoted here on SOL?

[Som@li]

Guys, You may deny it, but there is so much true about this article.

 

 

Even Amin Amir portaited in here